Chapter Three
THE NEXT MAD COW? Massive Outbreak of Scrapie in the American West Inflames the Fearful, the Fretful, and the Beef Industry Flacks. [“Gourmet” magazine, February 05]
“It’s going to be fine. Shh,” the policeman said, squatting next to her. A wood baton, a pair of handcuffs and a gun that looked like a toy dangled from his belt. He reached into a pouch at his back and took out a pair of disposable latex gloves. “Everything’s going to be alright. I just want to help you, okay?”
She nodded eagerly. Her eyes went wide when he touched her shoulder, probing painfully in the wound there. She could see herself in his mirrored sunglasses and she understood some of his reticence. Her tan was gone—just gone, her skin turned the color and consistency of old, mildew-damaged paper. Fine traceries of broken capillaries showed in her eyes and the skin around their sockets, a raccoon mask of dead blood. A prominent artery running from her jaw to beneath her left ear looked as if it had been painted on with eyeliner.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he told her. His name was EMERSON, according to the nameplate on his uniform, right above his badge, a bas relief of a pair of pistols crossed over a stylized Spanish mission. “Normally I’d call for an ambulance but I think we’d better just take you in the squad car. Can you walk?”
She didn’t know. Not in the same way she didn’t know who she was or what city she was in. Those were abstracts, easily defined and pigeonholed in the category of things she did definitively not know. Whether she could stand up was an open question, which was kind of a relief. Something she could find out.
Her body shuddered as she tried to put some weight on her feet, hauling herself upright by holding onto the bar stool. “Easy now. You’re probably feeling a little weak. Maybe a little light-headed too. That’s pretty common with this kind of injury.” Okay, enough, officer, she thought, but she kept her mouth closed. She needed it to grimace as she shifted her weight entirely onto her legs. Somehow she managed to stumble toward the door, supported on his arm, even though her knees kept locking up. Her muscles felt stiff in a way she knew they’d never felt before. Not so much a memory as an instinct, that, but it was something, and she was glad for it.
Outside another policeman was directing traffic away from the intersection. She glanced over and saw a pile of something on the street—old clothes, maybe fallen palm fronds or the tread off of a blown car tire or—oh. No. It was a body, a human body with a blue jacket draped over its face and chest. “Heh,” she gagged. “He’s the—”
“Shush now, little girl,” the cop said, trying to turn her away from the scene. There was more to it: chalk circles on the ground around pieces of brass. Spent shell casings. More police everywhere she looked—a severe-looking woman filling out a form on a clipboard. Others, mostly men, looking under cars and benches and potted palms, their hands gloved, tiny plastic bags in their hands. Gathering evidence. One cop sat on the hood of his car, his face in his hands while another rubbed slow circles on his back. “You only did your duty,” he said, and the one on the car hood took his hands away from his face, showing a look of absolute bleak horror.
Emerson pushed her into the back of a patrol car, pushing down on her head until her neck started to spasm but then she was in. He and another policeman—PANKIEWICZ—got into the front of the car.
Pankiewicz looked at her through the grille between the front and back of the car. She could barely see his face through the mesh. “How are you doing, Miss? You need any water or anything before we get going?”
She shook her head. “Hungry,” she croaked out. That was about what she could manage vocally. The word was disconnected from what was happening in her head but strangely not from her body. Her nausea had passed and her stomach growled audibly.
Pankiewicz grunted and turned this way and that as if looking for food. He opened the patrol car’s glove box and took something out. He had to get out of the car and come around to the back to give it to her—a snack-sized box of cookies. She took it gratefully. Once he was back inside Emerson got the car going and they headed out onto a highway, the flashers on but not the siren.
She shoved a cookie into her mouth with numbed fingers and crunched down on it. She couldn’t really taste it but a feeling of warmth and health swept through her with each swallow. So good. She thrust her hand into the box to get another, ripping the cardboard.
“Do you have insurance, Miss?” Pankiewicz asked her, picking up a radio handset. “We need to know which hospital to take you to.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled, the words distorted by the three cookies she’d stacked up between her teeth.
“I’m afraid that until we get a democrat in the White House it does,” Emerson said, darkly.
“Jesus, would you stop it?” Pankiewicz said. “Now’s not the time.” He turned to glance at her again, appraising her. Looking for something. “Am I right, Miss? Not when things are still so fucked up in Iraq. You don’t switch horses in mid-war. We need a strong leader more than ever.”
“I agree,” Emerson snickered. “Too bad we don’t have one right now. So, Miss. What’s your name, anyway?”
Her hands went automatically to a purse or a wallet but there was nothing in her pockets, nothing that could help her answer that question. Something told her to lie. Not a voice in her head so much as a rising tide of panic that came out of nowhere. Unfortunately she had no idea what to say.
While they had been bantering she had devoured the entire box of cookies. She looked down at the empty package which she had reduced to bits of shredded cardboard and wax paper. She’d even sucked out all the crumbs.
“Nilla,” she said. Nil. Nothing. She had nothing of herself left, after all. She would have to create something new and the box of cookies, the first purely good thing she’d found, made the perfect inspiration.
She wished she had some more. Not cookies necessarily. More food, real food.
Five minutes later they reached the hospital only to find the emergency room entrance blocked by two ambulances that had collided with each other. Nilla could see into one of them through its open rear doors. Nobody was inside but the interior lights were on. Blood dripped from the rear bumper.
“There must be something bad going down. This place looks swamped,” Pankiewicz said. He popped open his door before the patrol car had even come to a stop. He opened her door and helped her out. She leaned on him as they made their way around the ambulances and into the emergency room.
